VIDEO GAMING

Amazon buying S.F.'s Twitch

Amazon moved in to buy the San Francisco online gathering place for video gamers after the startup's deal with Google Inc. fell through, people with knowledge of the matter said. Amazon is paying $970 million in cash. Including retention-related payouts, the transaction is worth about $1.1 billion, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

The deal, the largest in Amazon's 20-year history, gives it a forum of more than 55 million monthly active users, where people discuss games or watch other gamers as they play. CEO Bezos has made video games a focus of a strategy to add more entertainment services. Just as the company is beefing up its TV programming available to Amazon Prime members, the company operates a game studio in Seattle and has been luring software developers to build more video-game titles for its Fire TV set-top box, Fire Phone and Kindle Fire tablets.

Google and Twitch were in talks this year, a person familiar with discussions said in May. As the deal was being discussed, investment banker Frank Quattrone introduced Twitch to other potential bidders, one of the people said. Sally Palmer, a spokeswoman at Quattrone's Qatalyst Partners LLC, didn't immediately return a call for comment.

Twitch is available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One game consoles. Started about seven years ago as Justin.tv, the service has a highly engaged audience of people who watch others play video games. In February, 1 million people shared videos via Twitch. The company raised $20 million from investors last year.

HOUSING

New-home sales drop

Fewer Americans bought new homes in July, evidence that the housing sector is struggling to gain traction more than five years into the economic recovery.

The Commerce Department said Monday that new-home sales fell 2.4 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 412,000. The report also revised up the June sales rate to 422,000 from 406,000.

New-home sales plunged 30.8 percent in the Northeast, followed by smaller drop-offs in the Midwest and West. Purchases were up 8.1 percent in the South, a region that usually accounts for more than half of all new-home sales.

Inventory of new homes on the market rose to six months, a level last reached in October 2011. The median price of a new home last month was $269,800, up 2.9 percent over the past 12 months.

The monthly sales data can be extremely volatile, yet the trend line shows that the market for new homes is "running in place," said Richard Moody, chief economist at Regions Financial.

RESTAURANTS

Is Tim Hortons fit for a King?

Burger King is in talks to buy doughnut chain Tim Hortons and create a holding company headquartered in Canada, which could cut its taxes.

Such a tax inversion, has become increasingly popular among U.S. companies and a hot political issue. Burger King was founded in 1954 with a single restaurant in Miami, where it is currently based.

In an inversion, a U.S. company reorganizes in a country with a lower tax rate by acquiring or merging with a company there. Inversions also allow companies to transfer money earned overseas to the parent company without paying additional U.S. taxes.

AGRICULTURE

Florida citrus faces threat

Florida's $9 billion citrus industry is facing its biggest threat yet, putting at risk the state's economy and its very identity. Blame a mottled brown bug no bigger than a pencil eraser that carries a lethal disease.

In China, where the problem was first discovered, it's called huanglongbing, "the yellow dragon disease." In Florida, it's known simply as "greening."

It arrived the Asian Citrus Psyllid, which carries bacteria that are left behind when the psyllid feeds on a citrus tree's leaves. The tree continues to produce useable fruit, but eventually disease clogs the vascular system. Fruit falls, and the tree slowly dies.